Understanding of spreadsheets
is for practical purposes “intuitive”. These arrangements are so familiar as to
appear “natural” and “obvious”, and this is part of their intention, and their
value.

Spreadsheets can concentrate
a lot of data on a single page. They can be used to sort (i.e. to “analyse”)
data and to summarise it down to totals and to a single grand total. They tend
to create some sort of “mind map”, in the sense of presenting both the parts
and the whole, in one go.

This item is intended to
introduce and to objectify the broad idea of spreadsheets. The next stage will
be for more comrades to begin to use this form of working.

Some simple rules will make
your spreadsheets better. Try to keep them on one page, both horizontally and
vertically. Use as few columns as possible. Use the biggest font possible. If
you use colours, use very pale ones.

This item completes our fifth
part on office processes. There could be much more to say about these and other
ones, including more about computer software. But the main point here is that
numbers of us, if not all of us, must learn, and must continue to learn how to
do such basic operations. The common aim should be to build up an internal
collective bank of expertise, so that when required, action proceeds
efficiently and smoothly.

Office processes have been
perfected under the bourgeois dictatorship, mainly as instruments of power over
the working class and other classes. To overthrow the bourgeois ruling class, the
partisans of our own class – the proletariat – will have to master these common
processes.